Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: January 1st

IN REMEMBRANCE OF CHRIST

This do in remembrance of Me. - 1 Corinthians 11:24

"Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." Do this in remembrance of Christ, or, as Paul expresses it, "discerning the Lord’s body," not only because you are in danger of forgetting but do this because you remember. Do this, not only in order that your reminiscences may be strengthened, but do it because they are strong. Seeing the Lord’s body, discerning His presence, loving that which you discern - do this! And, in like manner, " Whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." Do all, that is to say, for the sake of the character, as revealed to you, of Him whom you love; do it all, giving thanks unto God and the Father by Him. And then, in the parallel passage, "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily," - that is one principle; and next, as the foundation of all real heartiness, do it "as to the Lord." This is the foundation, and the limitation as well; for it is only when we do it "heartily, as to the Lord," that earnestness is kept from degenerating into absorption, and that a man, whilst working with all his might, and "diligent in business," shall also be "fervent in spirit." The motive is the same: in the Communion it is the remembrance of the Lord; in the ordinary life it is "in the name of the Lord Jesus." Is that sacred motive one which is kept for select occasions, and for what we call special acts of worship? It is to be feared that the most of Christian people do with that Divine reason for work, " the love of Christ constraineth me," as the old Franks (to use a strange illustration) used to do with their long-haired kings - they keep them in the palace at all ordinary times, give them no power over the government of the kingdom, only now and then bring them out to grace a procession, and then take them back again into their reverential impotence. That is very like what Christian people do, to a very large extent, with that which ought to be the rule of all their life and the motive of all their work. We sit down to the communion, and we do it "in the name of the Lord Jesus"; we commemorate Him there. When we come to pray, we speak to Him and in His Name. Our high tides of devotion do not come so often as the tides of the sea; and then for the rest of our time there is the long stretch of foul, oozy, barren beach when the waters are out, and all is desolation and deadness. That is not what a Christian man ought to be. There is no action of life which is too great to bow to the influence of "This do in remembrance of Me"; and there is no action of life which is too small to be magnified, glorified, turned into a solemn sacrament, by the operation of the same motive.